Funny Boy (2020): Growing up queer in Sri Lanka

Funny Boy (2020) [D: Deepa Mehta. Arush Nand, Brandon Ingram, Agam Darshi et al] Arjun is a Tamil boy who realises he’s gay in a country that criminalises people like him. The movie follows his life from childhood to young manhood, set in Sri Lanka during the ethnic war that resulted in somewhere around 100,000 deaths and about a million Tamils migrating to India, Canada, and other countries.
     Arjun’s Aunt Radh helps him accept his differences despite his father’s urging him to give up “girly” things. He later falls in love with a Sinhalese classmate. The ethnic violence peaks, and the family emigrates to Canada, where Radh has moved after a marriage arranged by her family to prevent her marrying a Sinhalese man. That marriage has failed, but Radh is happy to welcome her family to Toronto.
     The movie’s adapted from a novel by Shyam Selvadurai, The story is one damn thing after another. From time to time, we see the older Arjun in place of the boy, and later on, the boy instead of the man. I suppose this is intended to show how Arjun’s memories make his life cohere into a story. Real life isn’t a neat story, however. The messiness, almost incoherence of the script, mimics this, but also distances us from the characters, who become objects moved around by events that they don’t and can’t control. This is clearest at the crisis of the film, when rioting Sinhalese almost discover Arjun’s family hiding in a Sinhalese neighbour’s storage room, and go on to break into Arjun’s home and destroy it. Arjun’s decision to yield to his attraction to Shean doesn’t free either of them. It’s at best a brief time of mutual joy which can neither resist nor protect from the politics surrounding it.
     A knowledge of the Tamil-Sinhalese war helps provide context. The acting is uniformly very good, helping us Westerners understand a culture so different and yet so similar to our own. I get the impression that Mehta had a clear vision of what she wanted, and it wasn’t a neatly structured plot tied up with a neat bow of a resolution. I think she also wanted to show how avoiding politics is no defence. The movie was engaging despite itself, the kind that tosses up half-recalled scenes when you least expect them. Worth watching, even if only to get a vague notion of what it’s like to live in a different society than your own. Recommended. *** [Posted on IMDB with redactions]
      Footnote: The majority of posts on IMDB were whinges by people with a political axe to grind. In particular, they were annoyed that non-Tamils were hired to act the Tamil roles, and apparently they spoke Tamil badly. I can’t judge that, I can only judge the acting as I viewed it.